This page contains the most updated versions of the World Bank Group Environmental, Health, and Safety Guidelines (known as the "EHS Guidelines"). They are intended to be living documents and are occasionally updated. Earlier versions of the WBG EHS Guidelines can be found here and are provided for reference only.

The EHS Guidelines contain the performance levels and measures that are normally acceptable to the World Bank Group, and that are generally considered to be achievable in new facilities at reasonable costs by existing technology.

The World Bank Group requires borrowers/clients to apply the relevant levels or measures of the EHS Guidelines. When host country regulations differ from the levels and measures presented in the EHS Guidelines, projects will be required to achieve whichever is more stringent.

General EHS Guidelines

The General EHS Guidelines contain information on cross-cutting environmental, health, and safety issues potentially applicable to all industry sectors. This document should be used together with the relevant Industry Sector Guideline(s).

Disclaimer: The Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) Guidelines have been translated into Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish for your convenience. Reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate translation. The official text is the English version of the Guidelines. Any discrepancies or differences created in the translation are not binding and have no legal effect for compliance. If any questions arise related to the accuracy of the information contained in the translated Guidelines, please refer to the English version.

Acknowledgements: The IFC team would like to thank the team of the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) for the dedication in translating the EHS Guidelines into Chinese and in making a joint handbook on "International Experience in Promoting Green Credit: The Equator Principles and the IFC Performance Standards and Guidelines" possible.